Seminars for 2021

Seminars for 2021

1. Islam and Media. Ms. Agah. In this course we will consider the ways Muslims are racialized and gendered through representations in media. Close readings of scholarly texts, film, television, and news sources will provide us with tools for critically analyzing the portrayal of Muslims and of Islamic belief and practice. Through our analysis of media produced in the United States, we will explore how Muslims are rendered a racial and religious other and the role this intersection of race and religion plays in empire building. We will also consider how Muslim creators in the United States represent Islam and Muslim lives by telling stories that disrupt the stereotypical portrayals of Muslims and Islam through various forms of media. We will consider how these narratives not only counter racialized and gendered representations of Muslims, but also provide Muslim creators the opportunity to offer more nuanced and diverse portrayals of what it means to be Muslim. Assignments will include collaborative work to produce a form of written media, reflective writing, and a final research paper.

2. Women in Love. Ms. Anderson. In 1970, radical feminist Shulamith Firestone called love “the pivot of women’s oppression today.” More recently, US-based feminist theorists have argued that the ideology of romance continues to exert an outsized power over women’s mental and emotional lives, reinforced by a romantic-industrial complex geared to train women’s attention on falling in love, especially with men. This ideology not only coerces women to devote undue time and energy to romance, but also frequently leads them to justify unsatisfying or outright abusive relationships, in what queer theorist Lauren Berlant calls attachments of “cruel optimism.” At the same time, many consider love a life-sustaining treasure. The wondrous sensation of falling in love has been depicted countless times—from Sappho’s ancient love poems to Mitski’s “First Love / Late Spring.” Inspired by bell hooks’s claim that “To know love we must surrender our attachment to sexist thinking in whatever form it takes in our lives,” this seminar explores narrative depictions of women in love alongside theories from philosophy, gender and women’s studies, and sociology. We will explore both the oppressive aspects of romantic ideology—with special, but far from exclusive, attention to its heterosexist forms—and the liberatory potential of stories of women in love.

3. Pomona and the World. Mr. Anderson. In its mission statement, Pomona College describes itself as “a small residential community that is strongly rooted in Southern California yet global in its orientation.” Since its founding in 1887, Pomona and its students have been active participants in world history. What connects Pomona to places near and far, including China, Mexico, South Africa, and Denmark? How does Pomona fit into the larger history of Southern California? To what extent are our current struggles, including Black Lives Matter and the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented in our history? Working with a wide range of historical documents—campus newspapers, diaries, oral histories, and more—in this seminar we will come to understand Pomona College as an institution, and its students as historical actors. Through original research, critical analysis, and scholarly writing, students will learn how they fit into the college’s history, and will reflect on how they can shape its future.

4. American Road Trip. Ms. McWilliams-Barndt. Why are road trip stories so prominent in American history and culture? What do those stories – and their popularity – teach us about the United States? In reading work by authors such as Octavia Butler, Erika Lopez, Hunter S. Thompson, and Walt Whitman, and in watching films such as “Easy Rider,” “Green Book,” and “Nomadland,” we will discuss questions of freedom, equality, and community in American life.

5. Black Revolution. Mr. Beck. Oppression begets revolution. This seminar examines the history and thought of Black revolutionaries. We consider the global history of Black revolution chronologically, beginning with the 18th century Haitian Revolution, 19th century abolitionism, 20th century anti-colonial revolution and Black radicalism, and 21st century movements like Black Lives Matter. Our source material is, with slight exception, by Black activists and Black scholars. Woven throughout our discussions will be the occlusion of Black history from the social science of revolution and the contemporary politics of representation.

6. On Poor Taste. Mr. Boyer. What is poor taste? Who decides? Is it the same thing as bad taste? Is it the same thing as tastelessness? In this class, we will explore the changing notions of aesthetics, value, style, acceptable behavior, and the appreciation of the arts throughout US history. Topics may include Yankee doodle dandies, pumpkin spice lattes, Tommy Wiseau’s films, zoot suits, pink flamingos, Donald Trump’s hair, boy bands, MSG, or dogs playing poker. Bringing together influential scholarly texts on aesthetics, phenomenology, consumerism, class, and identity, including essays by bell hooks, Clement Greenberg, Stuart Hall, Susan Sontag, Pierre Bourdieu, David Hume, and Sianne Ngai, we will work to understand today’s debates about value within a historical context to highlight their connection to struggles over power and agency. Writing assignments will include show-and-tell presentations about emergent distinctions, informal responses to theoretical concepts, excavations of ancient judgements, and persuasive essays in support of that at which we turn up our noses.

7. Language and Gender. Mr. Divita. In this course, we will seek to answer the following question: how do ways of speaking reflect and construct our experience of gender? We will begin by exploring foundational research on language and gender within the field of sociolinguistics, tracing its development from the 1970s to the present. We will examine the linguistic resources through which individuals perform gender identities today; we will also consider the ways in which grammar constrains how gender may be invoked, and how such constraints vary across cultures. Throughout the semester we will engage with current debates about linguistic phenomena—such as uptalk, vocal fry, and the use of “like”—that are often gendered by popular media in pointed ways. We will also analyze how language can be used as a means of challenging gender norms. During the course, students will collect original language data, which they will analyze in light of the concepts and issues examined in our readings and class discussions.

8. Los Angeles and the Natural Environment. Mr. Gorse. So you are going to California? What do you expect to find there? You are probably asking yourself that, like many before you. This course explores the myth and history of Los Angeles and its relationship to the natural environment. We begin with Carey McWilliams’ classic, Southern California: An Island on the Land, on this modern “Eden” and its diverse histories. William Deverell and Greg Hise continue with Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles, taking on the difficult issues of sustainability. Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies takes us on the highways of the motor city; while Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles delves into the dystopic world of the “City of (Fallen) Angels.” Through film, history, literature, architecture and urbanism, we critically analyze Los Angeles as a metropolis in the sun—past, present, and future.

9. 9 out of 10 Seniors Recommend this First Year Seminar: Statistics in the Real World. Ms. Hardin. Headline: “Company Charged with Gender Bias in Hiring.” Is the company biased? How can we tell? What do we measure? The research supporting the headline is probably less definitive than you’d expect. In this course, we will investigate the practical, ethical, and philosophical issues raised by the use of statistics and algorithmic thinking in realms such as medicine, sports, the law, genetics, and economics. We will explore issues from the mainstream media (newspapers, webpages, TV) as well as scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. To do all of this, we will consider a wide range of statistical topics as well as encountering a range of uses and abuses of statistics in the world today.

10. Building the Future: Revolution, Imagination, Utopia. Ms. Jensen. What does utopia look like? The term “utopia,” coined by Thomas More, puns on the Greek words eutopia (good place) and outopia (no place). This double meaning haunts the utopian project: can an ideal society exist? What happens when utopian dreams go wrong? In this course, we will explore fictional works that imagine alternate worlds, as well as real-world attempts to build utopian communities (such as the 1917 Russian Revolution). We will consider such questions as: How can we build a more just and equal society? How can everyday life be transformed to create a new utopian society? What roles do science and technology, art and imagination, theory and praxis play in these societies? What is the relationship between the individual and the community? What mechanisms of control are necessary to achieve an ideal society? How might imagined worlds offer critiques of the contemporary reality they emerge from? Thinking about utopia and dystopia will lead us to dwell on a range of topics, including socialist, feminist, and Black liberation movements, policing and surveillance, human interactions with the environment, and the revolutionary potentials of education.

11. Math + Art: A Secret Affair. Ms. Karaali. We take these truths to be self-evident: You are a math person or you are not. You are an art person, or not. Some contest these “truths,” but the beliefs persist. If we put these stubborn myths aside, we can see that math and art have many real similarities. Many practice art and mathematics for their own sake rather than their profitable or practical applications. Aesthetic concerns are the main drivers of practitioners of both pursuits. We can trace the effects of the ambient culture in the development of a society’s art as well as its mathematics. Furthermore, math and art have been intricately intertwined in the tapestry that is the collective intellectual and cultural heritage of our species. In this seminar we will explore this tapestry with an eye toward uncovering what for many remains a clandestine affair: math and art together, through the centuries and into the future. Through careful reading of several texts and close engagement with various art works, we will expose the many different connections between mathematics and the arts. We will also reflect upon our own conceptions of mathematics and the arts and aim toward a unified perspective on both as embodiments of our human experience.

12. The European Enlightenment. Mr. Kates. European society in the eighteenth century was riddled with inequalities of all kinds: religious bigotry and political despotism, as well as new forms of racism, slavery, and class strife. The writers and artists associated with the European Enlightenment suggested radical ways to address these problems. These proposals encompassed both the political and social realms, imagining new forms of friendship and marriage, as if those relationships might constitute analogies to politics itself. In doing so, they blurred the lines between the government and the social, the political and the private, and established a moral foundation for our modern era. Readings will include primary works from the period by such authors as Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Richardson.

13. Thinking through Culture. Mr. Kindley. How do critics think with, and through, cultural objects: movies, paintings, photographs, songs, memes? What can the critical analysis of these objects tell us about the way we live now (or, in the case of older criticism, the way we lived then)? How has cultural criticism been affected by the Internet’s domination of the media and our social lives, and how can it help us to process traumatic events like the coronavirus pandemic or mass shootings? This course will introduce students to some of the most provocative and innovative cultural criticism of the 20th and 21st centuries. Authors to be studied may include Roland Barthes, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Greil Marcus, Jia Tolentino, Teju Cole, and Patricia Lockwood. In addition to responding to the readings, students will have opportunities to generate their own critical analyses of cultural objects of their choice.

14. The Spell of Reality. Mr. Kirk. There is an ancient saying, found in various forms in every tradition, according to which “reality must be thought of as a magic spell” (as Saraha puts it). If this is the case, the most straightforward way to understand the nature of reality is to investigate means of tricking the senses, technologies for the production of illusions. In other words, the most direct access to reality will be found in sorcery—or in art. This seminar will investigate some or all of the following topics: the origins of tragedy in ancient Greek goat-sacrifice, the seeding of “Western rationalism” by Mongolian shamans, the rise of romantic love as a misunderstanding of medieval mystical song, gay Ouija-board poetry, witches at CalTech, the religion of money, the cult of school, occult cinema, the psychological reality of UFOs, and the transformation of the gods into illnesses. Literature, film, and philosophy will be our sources.

15. The TV Novel. Mr. Klioutchkine. How does a television series relate to our everyday experience and to our understanding of the culture we live in? How did a nineteenth-century serialized novel relate to its readers’ perception of the world around them? What can these genres tell us about ourselves? In this seminar, we will explore these questions as we understand the links between the serialized novel and the original television series, the novel’s present-day popular incarnation. We will read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot (1867) before focusing on the television series Mad Men.

16. Public Art, Monuments, and Monumentality. Ms. Sancho Lobis. Engaging recent attention and reappraisal of public monuments and the individuals they represent, this course will be motivated by the following questions: what purpose do public monuments serve? What distinctions can we draw between public monuments and public art? Which values can and should motivate a commission for public art or public monuments? What makes something monumental? Our class meetings will include sustained looking and discussion of works of public art and public monuments on the campuses of the Claremont Colleges and in the adjacent space of Claremont Village. We will practice how we speak and write about public art, producing descriptive texts, first-person narratives, and audio and video tours. The course will culminate with proposals for new commissions of public art that will include written and visual components. Students will also have the opportunity to participate in the final stages of a temporary installation of campus-based public art.

17. Magnificent Cities. Mr. Lozano. Which are the great cities in history? What do Athens between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, the Bagdad of the Abbasid Empire, and fin de siècle Vienna have in common? What are the historical, economic and social forces that promote great cities? In this course, we will explore the economic determinants of urban life and why bringing people closer in space generates opportunities that foster economic growth. We will analyze the economic and historical forces that lead to the creation of these cities, the role of governments in promoting knowledge and development, and the different urban models that determine the size and spatial distribution of a city. In this class, we will explore how diversity, the transmission of information, urban density result in innovation and economic growth. We will also discuss why sprawl, crime, pollution, and traffic are often associated with urban life and the government interventions employed in mitigating these costs.

18. Geomythology: Geologic Observations Recorded in Traditional Indigenous Narratives. Ms. Moore. In this course we will explore how indigenous traditional narratives are expanding scientific insight into geological disasters that have occurred throughout human history and across the globe. There are many examples to draw upon. The Quileute and Hoh people of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, describe a tumultuous fight between Thunderbird and Whale during which the ground trembled and the ocean rose up to cover the whole land. This tribal mythology is informing our geological understanding of events surrounding the great Cascadia subduction zone earthquake of 1700. Similarly, native Hawaiians tell of Tūtū Pele setting the forest on fire while enraged at her sister Hi’iaka for stealing her lover, Lohi’au. This story enhances our understanding of a voluminous and long-lived effusive volcanic eruption on Hawaii in the 1500s. How do narratives such as these improve our interpretation of geohazard events that were not witnessed by the geoscientists currently seeking to understand and explain those events? What range of geologic processes is recounted by these stories? What details can we glean about such geologic events, from the micro to the macro scale? What responsibilities do we have to recognize, support, and advance the use of Indigenous Knowledge? We have much to learn from traditional indigenous narrative, not just sociologically and historically, but scientifically as well.

19. Chicanx Latinx Los Angeles. Ms. Ochoa. This seminar unmasks the glitter, fashion, and exclusionary Hollywood representations of Los Angeles by focusing instead on the often-overlooked Chicana/o-Latina/o identities, histories, inequalities, and communities throughout greater Los Angeles. Beginning with the Pomona Valley, we start the course with a discussion of the historical and structural factors shaping Los Angeles. We then consider legacies of inequality and resistance from the 1960s to the present, including education, criminalization, illegalization, gentrification and community organizing. Along with reading and writing about Chicana/o-Latina/o Los Angeles, we will also learn from local communities by leaving campus several times throughout the semester to extend our learning beyond the classroom walls.

20. Trees and Wood. Mr. O’Malley. This course explores trees and wood. Not as an end itself but as a foil that we might reflect on our assumptions about knowing. Trees as living organisms and wood as a cultural material are fascinating because of the variety of disciplines they touch: scientific, historical, economic, and cultural. As a class we will employ a range of writing forms as a way to parallel the same breadth of disciplines that claim to know what trees and wood are. In discovering the many incredible aspects about our subject matter, we will also negotiate incommensurate perspectives, reflect on what we privilege and embrace our diverse ways of knowing.

21. Lose Thyself. Mr. Quetin. You have just committed to four years of a liberal arts education, the expressed purpose of which is to free your mind and soul. But what happens if it doesn’t work out that way? Or what if this education serves you too well and your freedom takes you too far? In this course we will explore the art of being lost in the context of classics texts in western literature. We will place ourselves in the midst of the perennial effort to create order and harmony in the cosmos and the natural and societal forces tearing these world views apart. By learning how to communicate our own experiences of being lost we will join a greater conversation with a variety of lost souls over the last few millennia to examine the extraordinary transformations that can occur in those who find themselves adrift. We’ll be immersing ourselves in epic poetry, autobiographical sketches, philosophical essays, short stories, theater and art, as well as learning how to navigate the night sky and explore the origins of the universe.

22. Southern California Murals. Ms. Romero. This course explores the creation, culture, and politics of mural art in Southern California, from internationally famous murals at Pomona College to artworks in the greater Los Angeles region and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Through classroom discovery, independent research, fieldtrips to museum sites, and conversations with artists, we will trace the historical and contemporary practice of mural art in the region. We will study how murals represent the creative expression of artists in their time and place, but also how murals represent collaborative efforts to build community, raise awareness, and engage diverse publics. Students will engage in firsthand study of murals on the Pomona campus and in Los Angeles, as well as the rich collection of art at the Benton Museum of Art, Honnold Library Special Collections, and the Claremont Colleges.

23. The Idea of the Novel. Ms. Raff. The novel as most scholars understand it first appeared in the early seventeenth century and rose to prominence in the eighteenth century. We will read some of the earliest novelists’ accounts of what they were up to; some influential modern commentary on the nature of the novel; and landmark novels by such early innovators as Cervantes, La Fayette, Behn, and Defoe as well as by such later experimenters as Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, and Zadie Smith. We will explore ways in which novels differ from earlier kinds of narrative, the means novels use to depict subjective experience and the social world, and possible explanations for novel’s status as the dominant literary form of the last three centuries.

24. Biblical Beginnings: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and More in U.S. Culture Wars. Ms. Runions. In the Bible’s first chapter, Genesis 1, God is said to create the world by speaking. The words that describe creation then grew into more words, which grew into texts, and then into traditions, attitudes, and cultural productions. This seminar explores the multiple ways in which cultural truth and authority are constructed and negotiated, in scripture and beyond. We will study the first eleven chapters of the biblical book of Genesis, along with their interpretations in culture and politics. The Bible’s primeval accounts, themselves produced through exchange with other ancient Near Eastern cultures, have been incredibly generative for philosophy, theology, and art. Yet interpretation has narrowed in recent U.S. history to support racism, sexism, homophobia, creationism, and more. We will analyze the interpretive moves that have rendered Genesis 1-11 as significant support for anti-black, heteropatriarchal culture in the U.S, as well as those that produce more resistant readings. To understand the range of possibility for interpretation, will read precursor texts and afterlives of Genesis, including ancient Babylonian myths, early Jewish and Christian interpretations, Medieval and Renaissance art, early American political debates over race, contemporary U.S. culture wars, and popular culture. We will analyze how these texts have been interpreted, in what contexts, and to what ends.

25. Adventures with Russian Books: Tales of Passion, Crime, Wars, and Revolutions. Ms. Rudova. What is it about Russian literature that has intrigued readers around the world for more than two centuries? Why do the names of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, or Pelevin stir so much passion in generation after generation of book lovers? – This is your chance to find out! The short version: like no other literature, Russian writers go to extremes – and take their characters, plots, and readers along for the ride. In this seminar, we will engage their values, passions, beliefs, dreams, and fantasies and thus find out what makes Russians tick, what makes Russians Russian. We will read select works from Russian literature and analyze the narrative strategies and literary techniques that bring about their stylistic originality. In the process, we gain insight into the relationship between the human condition and art, and dig deeply into the individual, social, and political dilemmas faced by both literary characters and their authors, both in texts and the real life, culture and history of Russia.

26. Bad Music. Mr. Schreffler. Poets say that music is good for the soul; scientists say it’s good for the brain. In the dominant discourse of our society, music is portrayed, not just as an activity, but even as a force which “cultures” and humanizes people. In accord with these beliefs, people who do not recognize music’s goodness are viewed with suspicion. At best, such people are called “uncultured.” At worst, they are perceived as inhuman. Media reports of such acts as the Taliban movement banning music in Afghanistan are at once sensational and practically inscrutable to a modern Western worldview. Yet, far from being just a few exceptional cases of philistines and extremists, there are significant cultural spheres in the world in which music, itself, is viewed with skepticism—and for arguably valid reasons. Moreover, even modern Western discourse does not deem all formations of music to be good. The belief in music as something essentially good, in idealized form, is thus contradicted by innumerable scenarios in which people are criticized, shamed, or even punished for engaging with music of certain types or in certain ways. In this seminar, we will explore notions of “bad music” from various ethical and cross-cultural perspectives. Diverse examples of musics, of different cultural groups and historical periods, will inspire rigorous critique and self-reflection. In writing and discussions, students will be challenged to go beyond the facile conclusion that judgments regarding music are “all subjective” and of little real-world consequence. Our aim is to articulate and develop our approaches to discussing value—to distinguish what we merely dislike, what we simply do not understand, and what we may reasonably call “bad” in multicultural ethical contexts.

27. The Idea of Money. Mr. Seery. This course will examine the idea of money, drawing from the perspectives and literatures of many academic disciplines: political theory, philosophy, religion, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, media studies, history, literature, art, music, theater, and perhaps a few others. Readings from Max Weber, Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Shakespeare, Dante, Jacques Derrida, Charles Baudelaire, Georg Simmel, Friedrich Hayek, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and more. As a culminating project we will play the lottery, and if we win, we’ll be better positioned to test our ideas against reality. We will also take a field trip to view (and participate in) a taping of “The Price is Right!” at CBS Studios in Hollywood. Note: This is not an economics course and does not serve as any sort of introduction into economics.

28. The Arts and Aesthetics of the Islamic Middle East. Mr. Shay. What we today term Islamic art did not appear overnight with the advent of Islam as a faith, but rather took several centuries of artists and craftsmen, often non-Muslims, developing and creating designs and elements, largely from the societies that proceeded them, especially borrowing selectively from Byzantine and Sasanian art traditions in order to bring into existence a tradition that we can call Islamic art. Through readings, visual examples found in the readings or other sources, class discussions, videos, and other media, the class will examine the spectrum of Islamic art and architecture to identify elements such as geometric design and improvisation that form the basis for the creation of Islamic art. Students are encouraged to bring samples of Islamic art or Islamic artistic performances to class to share and discuss with the class. The class will examine in detail, together, clothing, calligraphy, which is perhaps the most important aesthetic form and which constitutes a visual form that creates a great impact on a visitor to a Middle Eastern city as well as related genres like music, dance, and Quranic recitation.

29. Theatre in an Age of Climate Change. Mr. Taylor. (Not offered in FA21). Even as we are faced with an ongoing pandemic, climate change remains one of the defining issues of our time. What does the theatre have to tell us about humanity’s symbiotic and ever-evolving connection with the environment? How can the theatre help us re-imagine our relationship with and existence in a rapidly changing natural world? And how can the theatre inspire action in our immediate (and urgent) environmental futures? By encountering a dynamic range of contemporary ecodramas in reading, writing, and discussion, we will explore possible answers to these and other questions central to the study of theatre in an age of climate change. No theatre experience is necessary.

30. Language, Community, and Power. Ms. Thomas. Language is inherently social—a tool for communication and often a signifier of identity, status, and belonging. Learning language(s) can facilitate effective sharing of ideas and build bonds between people, yet humans frequently employ linguistic discrimination to demarcate in-group and out-group standing and reproduce social hierarchies. A core principle of sociolinguistics is that no dialect is inherently superior to any other. If different groups stigmatize some forms of language as “uneducated” or “ungrammatical,” they marginalize users of those varieties and miss the opportunity to appreciate the creative capacity of language both for the nuanced expression of ideas and the celebration of identity. Certainly, some standardization increases efficiency. We rely on a shared sense of what words “mean” and agreement on basic rules about how we string them together to form more complex utterances. Academia, and more specifically the construct of academic writing, is a fascinating microcosm for exploring the potential of language to facilitate or impede communication and community. What does academic writing—and for that matter, academic speaking or discussion—really involve? Who has power to define it and evaluate others’ attempts at engaging in it? In this course, we will consider how educators and students can co-create inclusive discourse communities.

31. Aphrodite and the Power of Love. Ms. Valentine. Can love transform critical awareness into empowered activism? In Greek mythology, Aphrodite sets human hearts on fire and launches a decade-long war. For Plato, love leads to philosophical enlightenment. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed: “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have reimagined how to cultivate love in our own lives. It is impossible to ignore love’s awesome and ubiquitous power, but is love transhistorical and universal or socially-constructed and subjective? In this course, we will study the power and meaning of love in diverse works of literature, philosophy, and art, including Sappho, Ovid, Sigmund Freud, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Judy Chicago and Alison Saar. We will ask how love promotes social-justice activism, as in the Pussyhat Project and the Movement for Black Lives. In writing, through dialogue, and while working collaboratively on a creative project, we will reflect on how our personal histories shape our understanding of love. By developing relationships throughout the college community, including with the Pomona College Benton Museum of Art, the Queer Resource Center, and the Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, we will aim not only to understand but also to cultivate the transformative power of love.
32. Tracing Ecotopias. In this course, we begin a journey to explore possible futures for this human-dominated world. From creation myths to visions of apocalypse, we cast our hopes and fears into stories that reflect the long and complex relationship between humans and the natural world. We will examine variety of ecological utopias and dystopias and consider how they use (or misuse) scientific knowledge and cultural fears using a wide range of sources, which include utopian narratives, visual arts, science fiction film, and concrete attempts to create in utopian communities. Our sources include fictional works (e.g. More’s Utopia, Gilman’s Herland), film (e.g. On The Beach, The Day After Tomorrow, Children of Men, and The Hunger Games), various intentional community descriptions (e.g. communes, kibbutz). By drawing on these sources, we will evaluate we might imagine the relationship between “us,” “them,” and “the world,” and how this triangle of actors continues to shape contemporary thought about our ecological context.

Other courses offered by the Writing Program